Newton’s Fire (7 page)

He took it from her, pulled away the flimsy tissue paper. He enjoyed presents but he found unwrapping them hard. When he saw the jacket, he couldn’t prevent his smile, which made her smile too. It was from a charity shop, sure, but it was a book he’d mentioned as an aside during her last visit, his way of asking without asking. His smile quickly vanished, though; he looked, suddenly, ashamed. His eyes began to water, causing her far more anguish than his reproaches ever could. He bowed his head and covered his face and then his shoulders began to hump. She put her arms around him, held his cheek against her chest until he’d gathered himself once more. Then she gave him a moment or two longer to wipe his eyes. ‘I’ll get a better car soon,’ she promised. ‘As soon as the royalties start coming in.’

That made him smile. ‘What was it called again?’

‘
Cynic Philosophy in Second Century Anatolia
.’

‘That’s the baby,’ he said. ‘Title like that, it’ll be flying off the shelves. And don’t forget the foreign language rights. That’s where the real money is.’

‘I don’t want you getting too excited,’ she said, ‘but I had a call from L.A.’

‘I’m not surprised. It’s got Oscars written all over it. And it’s not just the box-office, you know, it’s the merchandising.’

‘That’s what they say.’

‘We’ll sell little Diogenes dolls. When you turn them upside down, they’ll shake a fist and yell “Get off my lawn!” That was Diogenes, wasn’t it?’

‘Close enough.’

They looked fondly at each other. Bren took her hand with his good one, interlaced fingers with her, shook his head. ‘I don’t know why I do it,’ he said. ‘You come all the way out here for me, and I just make you feel bad.’

‘Shh,’ she said.

‘You do so much for me, and all I ever do is make you feel bad.’

‘You’re my brother,’ she said. ‘All you ever do is make me feel good.’ She felt in danger of welling up, so she consulted her watch to clear her head, brace herself for the ordeal ahead. This place was only partly paid for by the Ministry of Defence; what remained was far too much for Rachel’s paltry income from the library and her occasional bartending. Their lives, therefore, depended upon the continuing goodwill of the care home’s management team. If they hardened their hearts today, Rachel didn’t know what they’d do. Bren would go crazy without his army friends, yet the publicly-funded homes within any kind of distance seemed almost designed to drive costly veterans like him to suicide.

‘We should head in,’ said Bren. ‘No point being late.’

Rachel took a deep breath. ‘No,’ she agreed. No point indeed.

There was no sign of Pelham’s Alfa in the largely deserted Cherry Hinton Science Park; but, now that Luke was here, he might as well ask. He left the Harley hidden behind a line of wheelie-bins, hurried up the front steps into reception. An elderly guard was behind the desk, doing a crossword puzzle while listening to local radio. The way he looked Luke up and down reminded him of what a mess he was. He did his best to appear confident all the same. ‘Pelham Redfern, please,’ he said.

‘And you are?’

The radio pipped the hour; the news came on. He belatedly realized he couldn’t give his real name, lest the police already had put out an alert. Yet it had to be a name Pelham would recognize; someone he’d want to see. ‘Jay Cowan,’ he said.

The guard nodded, made his call. It seemed Pelham was here after all. He gave him Jay’s name, raised an eyebrow in surprise at the warmth of the response. ‘Mr Redfern will be down in a minute,’ he said.

Luke nodded at the washroom door. ‘May I? Been a hell of a day.’

The guard smiled. ‘I’d guessed that much for myself,’ he said.

Even though he’d been expecting it, Luke was still startled by the figure that confronted him in the washroom mirror. His face was filthy, his hair spiked, his shirt spattered. There were no towels, only a blow-dry machine, so he tore off handfuls of toilet paper, squirted soap from a dispenser, and went to work. He was still at it when the door opened and Pelham walked in, wearing a faded Zanzibar T-shirt and blue jeans that slouched around his hips like a gunslinger’s belt. He was as tall, broad and shaggily handsome as ever, yet much heavier in the gut too, like a retired second-row forward making up for the diet years. ‘Luke, mate,’ he frowned. ‘They told me it was Jay.’

‘Yes. Sorry about that. Listen: do I have any credit in the bank with you?’

‘Of course you do,’ said Pelham. ‘You know that. Why? What’s going on?’

‘Can we get out of here? I’ll tell you on the way.’

Pelham nodded. ‘Give us a minute,’ he said. ‘There’s some stuff I need to shut down. Then I’m all yours.’

They hit turbulence over the
massif central
. The jet shuddered and dropped sharply enough for Croke to slop a little of his bourbon. He muttered irritably as he wiped it away. Then his phone rang. Thaddeus. ‘Is it true what Avram tells me?’ he asked breathlessly. ‘That you’ve found it?’

‘No. But we
have
found the papers. And we’re confident they tell us where it is.’

‘That’s wonderful news! Just wonderful.’ But then his tone became more guarded. ‘Avram said you needed to speak to me. What about?’

‘I need to know if you’re in or not.’

‘Of course I’m in.’ He sounded baffled. ‘Why would you even ask?’

‘Forgive me, Reverend,’ said Croke. ‘But my experience has been that, whenever there’s been an urgent decision to make, you’ve notified your colleagues on your Third Temple Committee. You’ve solicited their opinions. You’ve preached long and no doubt worthy sermons at each other. You’ve checked your scriptures for relevant texts and you’ve prayed for guidance. And by the time you’ve all reached a conclusion, the opportunity is across the border and into another country.’

‘I sit on a committee,’ said Thaddeus. ‘That’s how committees work.’

‘Today’s Sunday,’ said Croke. ‘As Avram no doubt explained to you, this has to happen tomorrow night or not at all. Let me say that again:
tomorrow night or not at all
.’

‘I know the schedule.’

‘Add in the time difference and we now have less than thirty hours to find this thing and ship it to Israel. So there’s no time to notify your colleagues. There’s no time for sermons or for prayer. It’s go for it or let it slide. Me, I’m in. I’m all in. I’m on my way to England now, because I’ll be needed there, my plane and me. But I need to know that everyone else is all in too; because if anyone holds back, we all go down.’

‘God created our universe six thousand years ago, Mr Croke,’ said Thaddeus. ‘It says so in the Bible. Four thousand years before Christ, two thousand years since. Those six thousand years are the first six days of God’s creation. And on the seventh day He rested.
On the seventh day
. The thousand year rule of Christ on earth is about to start, Mr Croke. The Rapture and the Last Judgement. That is a plain biblical fact. Look around you. The signs are
everywhere
. Wars, famines, pestilence, earthquakes, the demise of the whore of Rome. I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. So yes I’m all in, as you put it. I was
born
all in. What do you need?’

‘I need you to call the White House for me.’

Thaddeus laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘You just said you were all in.’

‘You don’t understand how these things work,’ said Thaddeus. ‘There are rules. There are protocols. The biggest of which is that I
never
contact her. She contacts me.’

‘You said last year that she knew about all this. You told me she was excited and had asked to be kept informed.’

‘She was and she did.’

‘Well, then. Inform her. Let her know that we’ve found the papers, that they’re pointing us to some buildings in Central London. Tell her that you believe absolutely that we’ll find it there, because this is God’s plan and His seventh day is about to dawn, and He wouldn’t have sent us all these signs unless He meant for us to succeed. Convince her that this is the mission God has appointed for her, that this is her time, that she is the one.’

‘This
is
the time,’ said Thaddeus. ‘She
is
the one. She’s the Esther for our age.’

‘It’s not me you need to convince, Reverend. It’s
her
. And when you’ve convinced her, you’re going to need to fly up to Washington to be with her and keep her strong, or her advisors will talk her out of it again.’

‘I can’t. I have duties here. My congregation.’

Same as it ever was
, sighed Croke.
All in until he actually had to do something
. ‘I remember the Book of Esther,’ he said. ‘My mother used to read it to me at bedtime. There was a Thaddeus in it, wasn’t there? That old Jew who refused to bow to the prince, the one who sparked all the trouble.’

‘His name was Mordecai.’

‘Mordecai, Thaddeus. I knew it was something like that.’ He shifted his phone to his other ear. ‘And don’t I recall that this Mordecai-Thaddeus guy had another important role in the story? Wasn’t he was the one who, when Esther got scared, convinced her that God had made her queen precisely for that moment, that she needed to do His will
whatever the consequences
?’

Silence as Thaddeus digested this. ‘You don’t know her very well, do you,’ he said. ‘She isn’t the kind of person you can give orders to.’

‘I’m not suggesting you give her orders. I’m suggesting that you tell her what we’re on the brink of, then see how she responds.’

‘How do you expect her to respond?’

‘I think she’ll ask what she can do to help,’ said Croke. ‘And when she does, this is what you’re going to tell her.’

The earthquake had torn fissures in many of Jerusalem’s streets, yet the resultant congestion wasn’t as bad as it might have been, for tourists had cancelled their bookings by the planeload, spooked by the threat of aftershocks, food shortages and riots, by reports of sewage on the streets and the first whispers of contagious diseases.

A bus took Avram from Jaffa Gate to King George. From there he had to walk. He hurried up Strauss into the ultra-Orthodox quarter of Mea Shearim. The streets here were strewn with torn fly-posters and other litter, and there was graffiti everywhere. The squalor dismayed him, as it always did, for it reflected so poorly on the devout, and gave unnecessary fuel to those who mocked the Haredim as all prayer and no fasting.

He paused outside a grocer’s, picked up a lemon, glanced back. Only men in view, all of them dressed in the distinctive black frock coats and broad-brimmed hats of the ultra-Orthodox. This wasn’t his favourite quarter of Jerusalem, sure, but it made it child’s play to check for a tail.

He turned right at Yesheskel. The earthquake had sheared the front off an apartment building, leaving the street narrowed by skips and scaffolding. He entered
the religious bookshop to find Shlomo himself behind the
counter. He looked startled to see Avram, but he covered it quickly. ‘Yes?’ Shlomo asked. ‘May I help.’

‘My great-nephew’s bar mitzvah is next week,’ said Avram. ‘I’m looking for something special.’

‘We keep our special stock in the back.’ The bookseller handed over to an assistant, a plump and soft young man, beard wispy as undergrowth after a drought. Then he led Avram back to his office, where they greeted each other more warmly. ‘This must be important,’ said Shlomo pointedly. ‘You wouldn’t have come here otherwise.’

‘It’s time,’ said Avram.

Shlomo nodded. ‘And you decided this yourself, did you? Without consulting me or my men?’

‘The Lord decided, praise His Name,’ said Avram. ‘It’s tomorrow night. We need to start preparing now.’

‘Tomorrow night? Are you crazy? Haven’t you seen the extra soldiers they’ve brought in?’

‘They’re guarding the perimeter,’ said Avram. ‘We’ll be attacking from inside the perimeter.’

‘And the
Waq
f
? They’ve doubled their numbers too.’

‘The
Waq
f
!’ mocked Avram. ‘Old men with sticks.’

‘And the heifer?’ asked Shlomo.

The question blindsided Avram. With everything else going on, he’d forgotten about the heifer. But he didn’t let it show. ‘What about her?’

‘You have her?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How could we do this otherwise?’

Shlomo looked stunned. ‘You never said.’

‘No. Because last time we got anywhere close, we found her one morning with her throat slit. So this time I kept my mouth shut. Can you blame me?’

‘How old?’

‘Her third birthday was three weeks ago,’ he said. ‘The day of the earthquake. The
hour
of the earthquake.’

‘Then it
is
true,’ said Shlomo, awed. ‘It
is
time.’

‘What have I been telling you?’

‘And the sacrifice? When do we do it?’

‘Tonight.’

‘No,’ said Shlomo. ‘I can’t get my men together that soon.’

‘Your men?’

‘Of course. A perfect red heifer. The first for two thousand years. And you expect us not to be there?’

‘I’m afraid there isn’t time for—’

‘Then we make time. For this, we make time. First thing tomorrow morning. I can have them ready by then. Where is she?’

‘Near Megiddo,’ said Avram. ‘But I—’

‘There’s a car park by the archaeological site. We’ll meet you there. Seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Seven o’clock.’ He got to his feet, the meeting over. ‘And then tomorrow night we’ll do this thing, just as we’ve planned. Tomorrow night, we take the Mount back for Israel and the Lord.’

‘What happened to the Alfa?’ asked Luke, climbing in passenger side of a red BMW convertible. ‘I thought you’d never sell that beast.’

‘And I never will,’ said Pelham, belting himself in. ‘She’s in the shop. Some bastard telephone pole leapt out in front of us, fucked her bonnet right up.’